Anarchy and the FBI by Mickey Z.www.dissidentvoice.org
November 24,
2003

"What a waste of thumbs that are opposable/To make machines that are
disposable And sell them to seagulls flying in circles/Around one big right
wing Yes, the left wing was broken long ago/By the slingshot of COINTELPRO
And now it's so hard to have faith in anything/Especially your next bold
move"
-- Ani DiFranco, "Your Next Bold Move"

In
a November 23, 2003 piece entitled, "FBI Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies," New
York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau broke the rather unsurprising news with
this lead: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive
information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar
demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any
suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to
interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum."

Representing the land of the free, FBI officials told Lichtblau the
comforting news that the "intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at
identifying anarchists and 'extremist elements' plotting violence, not at
monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters."

If there
was ever a fail-safe, catch-all band of villains, it's the anarchists. Evoke
the term "anarchist" and everyday citizens look the other way when law
enforcement (sic) agencies bend the rules. Whether it's the Palmer
raids of 1918-21, the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the
devastating impact of the FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), it's
nothing new. In fact, AK Press just re-issued Berkman's "What is Anarchism?"
and this 70-plus year-old book could've been written yesterday.

"You have
heard that Anarchists throw bombs, that they believe in violence, and that
Anarchy means disorder and chaos," Berkman writes. "It is not surprising
that you should think so. The press, the pulpit, and everyone in authority
constantly din it into your ears." But he adds, "Most of them know better"
and "have a reason for not telling you the truth."

Part of
that truth involves the reality that, as Berkman explains, "it is capitalism
and government which stand for disorder and violence," while anarchism
"means order without government and peace without violence." The reason for
not allowing those self-evident truths to be known is obvious. What
self-perpetuating corporate culture wants a populace appreciating that the
word "anarchy" comes from the Greek, meaning "without force, without
violence or government"?

"Government is the very fountainhead of violence, constraint, and coercion,"
Berkman writes. "Anarchism teaches that we can live in a society where there
is no compulsion of any kind. A life with compulsion naturally means
liberty; it means freedom from being forced or coerced...You cannot lea such
a life unless you do away with the institutions that curtail your liberty
and interfere with your life, the conditions that compel you to act
differently than you would really like to."

Institutions like the FBI and its "extensive information on the tactics,
training and organization of antiwar demonstrators." Conditions like the
"war" on non-US-sponsored terror.